The Good Father - Page 16
“I’m a pediatric nurse, and Santa Raquel Children’s Hospital is slated to be the best in the state. With all of the new positions to fill, I was offered the chance to be a charge nurse...”
In another lifetime that would have been reason enough to move.
He held her captive with a look and didn’t relent.
“I have to prove to myself that I’m completely over you. That living near you doesn’t matter to me. Personally.”
He sat back. Took another sip of wine. Thought about the hard alcohol he refused to touch. About how his father had used it to numb his pain. And then brought pain to his loved ones.
“I’m happy, Brett,” she said. “I’ve built a good life for myself, and I like where I am.”
Brett nodded, wanting to tell her how glad he was to hear those words. But he wasn’t sure he believed them.
“But Chloe, you remember her?”
As if he’d forget being the best man in her brother’s wedding. Or forget the woman who’d once been like a sister to him. Clenching his fingers around the stem of his wineglass, he acknowledged her remark with a small nod.
“Well, Chloe has been getting on me to start dating again. I keep telling her I’m happy being single, but she keeps trying to hook me up.”
Was she trying to make him jealous? Because it wasn’t working. He would have loved nothing more than to see Ella happily married.
Safely obliterating any temptation he might ever have to attempt to avail himself of her sweetness in the future.
Ella took a sip of her wine. He watched the glass touch her lips. Imagined how they’d feel to that glass if it could only have a second of humanity. Felt sorry for it that it could not...
“Then one day about a year ago she suggested to me that I wasn’t as over you as I thought I was. She claims that I’m a victim of our broken marriage and that until I face that fact, until I can see you and know for certain that I’m over you, I’ll never have a completely joyful life of my own.”
Chloe needed to mind her own damned business.
“A move’s a little drastic, don’t you think? You could have just called. I’d have stopped by so you could see for yourself that it’s done.”
Done. It had to be done. He’d known that. Acted on it. Still believed. Without even a smidgeon of doubt.
“My therapist told me that I can hide and pretend forever, but to really take charge of my life, I’d need to come out into the open, take the air into my lungs and start moving forward.”
“Your therapist told you to move to Santa Raquel?”
Ella’s smile gave him an ache in the groin. “No, I came up with the idea all on my own. And only after my supervisor suggested to me that I apply for the position in the Santa Raquel NICU.”
Her work with seriously ill babies interested him. Immensely. In terms of how she was handling it. How she felt when she got home at night.
He had questions he’d never ask. Needed answers he wouldn’t seek.
Because they’d open a box, let out topics they were never going to discuss. Not ever again.
After years of fertility treatments, of humiliating procedures, Ella had finally been able to get pregnant. And Brett had killed her dream.
He’d thought he could handle being a father. Had been sure he’d be different from his own father. Until he’d found out Ella was really pregnant.
And had to accept the fact that there was no going back.
He’d grown more and more withdrawn. Irritable. Terse. Until one night, when terrors had driven him from their bed, she’d come to find him. She’d known something was wrong. She’d pushed him to be honest with her. And he’d turned on her. Raising his voice. Telling her he didn’t want to be a father. That he didn’t want their baby.
When she’d asked him, with a horrified expression he would never forget, what he wanted to do about it, he’d told her he’d seen a divorce lawyer. That she didn’t ever have to worry. She and the baby would be well taken care of.
It was only then he’d realized that she’d been thinking more in terms of counseling. Maybe feared he wanted an abortion.
She’d never considered that he’d leave her.
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